All the Best People are Mad!
by electoriasinfonie
Summary: All artists are a little bit insane. This applies to Roderich Edelstein and his crazy demon family, what he did when the Serbian assassin killed his royal family, and more. AusHun one shots.
1. Part 1

**All the Best People are Mad – Part One**

 **A collection of AusHun oneshots by electoriasinfonie**

 _"There is a lady all in white,_

 _Holds me and sings a lullaby._

 _She's nice to see and she's soft to touch_

 _She says, 'Cosette, I love you very much.'"_

"Father, I want to kill her!"

Roderich pauses the movie that's playing on the television and looks down at his son. "Oh? Well, what shall you kill her with?"

The younger boy thinks for a moment before standing and deciding, "I'll get the kitchen knife and slice her wrists… and then once I've gotten her cut up good enough I'll slit her throat and hang her from somewhere." The boy pauses and says, "Pity she's not real." But then he gets the kitchen knife and stabs the television, which makes an awful crackling noise and goes black.

"Oh, but she is real." Roderich looks like he's seen a ghost. He raises a trembling hand and points at a spot on the stairs. "She's there. She's coming down, she's going to hurt us…" The Austrian falls to his knees, trembling.

His son hugs him tightly and calls, "Mother, he's gone again!" Then he pats his father's shoulder worriedly and whispers, "It's just a vision, it's not real…"

"Roderich!" A disheveled-looking woman runs into the room and kneels by her husband. "Roderich… There's nobody there, it's just you and me and Leopold." She takes his cold hand and kisses it gently before pressing it to his chest, hoping to get some warmth back into him.

Within five minutes he exhales and hangs his head. His eyes look alive again. "Eliza. I'm sorry." He brings her into his arms and embraces her.

"It's not your fault," she murmurs and hugs him close. When he holds her she seems more relaxed, as if she's glad that he hasn't remained trapped in his hallucinations.

* * *

It's Eliza's turn to make dinner that night. Though they have very little, they make the most of it.

Roderich watches from the shadows. He doesn't trust Eliza to be alone in a room where there are knives, in fear that something will happen to her.

And he's right to watch over her – halfway through she's holding a knife to her own neck again. He comes up to her and pries it from her fingers, despite how tight her grip is on the handle.

"Eliza, stay with me," he whispers. "I love you." He kisses down her neck a little before she collapses, sobbing, into his arms.

"I'm so worried," she cries, "take this pain away from me! Please, anything you can do! It hurts!"

It has always been this way. After the war the family slowly started going insane: Roderich was first to go, he began hallucinating when he came back from the battlefield. Eliza, in her worry for him, grew suicidal. And their young son Leopold became a maniac, damaged by his parents' insanity.

So Roderich places his hands a little below her chest and murmurs sweet condolences into her ear.

When she's feeling better she tells him, "I love you," and kisses him deeply.

He finishes making dinner that evening, as he usually does after Eliza's episodes. He loves her and she loves him. This is really the only reason they are both alive; she makes his world become clear again and he's why she hasn't killed herself yet.

* * *

After dinner they go to the parlor and listen to Roderich play. He appears content and is smiling again. Eliza and Leopold are happy too, his music has always relaxed them and it's one of their anchors to the real world.

He's playing quite well until the fast passage is done. He looks down at his fingers in terror and the piano sounds stop. "They're bleeding…" he says in a hollow voice.

They aren't, of course. But he has played until his hands bled in the past, and this memory haunts him.

"Go to bed, Leopold," Eliza says firmly. He nods and scampers off, probably to polish his knives and guns before he sleeps.

She approaches Roderich quietly and sits on the bench next to him. "Can I see your hands?"

He nods and lays his hands in her lap. She kisses each finger and leans in close to him. "You're all right."

He blinks twice and the vision is gone. "Thank you," he tells her gratefully.

They go up to their bedroom hand in hand. She lays on top of him and caresses his cheek before he sits up and embraces her.

Eliza knows what he's going to do. They've done it many times in the past and she doesn't mind it – in fact she likes it now.

He brushes her hair away from the back of her neck and bites down. His fangs sink into her skin and he tastes her blood. It's good, of course, and the taste is especially sweet to him since they're married.

A little sound escapes her lips and she leans back against him. Though she can already feel a bruise forming, it's better than the pain of worrying.

After this it will be her turn to have his blood. This is how they spend their nights, their immortal nights… because anything is better than a hurting mind.


	2. Part 2

**All the Best People are Mad – Part Two**

"Franz Ferdinand and Sophie are dead."

The news stabs Eliza like a knife to the heart. "What do you mean?" she asks Roderich blankly.

"They were assassinated this morning by a Gavrilo Princip of Serbia," he reads from the letter, his frown deepening. "What will this mean for our empire?"

Eliza simply stares ahead. How could Franz and Sophie be dead? She's grow rather close to the latter, and is already beginning to mourn her friend's death.

There's a knock at the door and a servant says demurely, "His Highness wants your presence in his study."

So Roderich and Eliza slip silently through the dark hallways and go to the emperor's study.

"I've written a letter to Serbia to let our demands be known. They have twenty-four hours to accept our terms or we declare war." He hands the paper to Roderich to inspect.

He and Eliza read over the terms. While he seems satisfied, she is not. She points at one of them and reads out loud.

"Allow Austrian police to operate in Serbia? They'll never agree to that."

"They shouldn't have shot Franz and Sophie, then."

Eliza wants to slap some sense into Roderich and the emperor, but she restrains herself. "Maybe it is so…"

"Besides, they probably don't want to fight us anyways. They did just fight a war of their own," the emperor adds.

Roderich yawns. "Hopefully they'll respond by morning," he says tiredly. "Goodnight."

* * *

When Eliza wakes up he's already awake and pacing the length of their room, a far cry from his normal self.

"The Serbians responded," he tells her by way of good morning.

"What did they say?"

"I don't know. They said to come when you wake up."

So she throws on one of his coats over her nightdress and they hurry to the emperor's study.

"They said no." The emperor gives them the paper. One term is highlighted – the one that Eliza had pointed out the previous night.

Roderich sighs. "With a heavy heart, the Empire of Austria-Hungary officially declares war on Serbia."

When they're in privacy, Eliza murmurs to him, "This is mad…"

Roderich looks at her funny. "All the best people are mad," he tells her. "Or else how would we change the world?"


	3. Part 3

**All the Best People are Mad – Part Three**

"Do come in, do come in." A pleasant-looking Roderich greeted Eliza and her parents at the entrance to her house.

They came in and were pleased to find that he lived in a comfortable, well-furnished house. He would do well for Eliza.

He offered some drinks and carried them on a platter up to the music room. That night Roderich was going to propose to Eliza, having her parents' permission for her hand in marriage.

So he talked amiably to them as he set up the piano, first getting his books and then clearing the lid. He lifted it and was about to prop it open when his hand slipped. The piano lid fell straight onto his hand.

* * *

Since then he hadn't been the same. He woke up and couldn't feel his hand, effectively ruining his dream of becoming a concert pianist.

So he composed. He married Eliza and they had a child, but the poor soul died at only a year old.

Roderich became morose. He could be calm one moment and in a fit of rage the next. He spent days locked in the music room and no amount of convincing from Eliza could get him to come out. He trusted no one.

Then one day a gunshot rang out from his music room. She rushed to see what happened and there was Roderich standing with a small gun in his hand and a smoking bullet on the floor.

"Roderich, dear, what's the matter?" She took the gun from him and he offered surprisingly no resistance.

"Burn it," he said in a flat voice. "This doesn't make me happy."

"What?"

"The piano."

"The piano?" Something was terribly wrong, Eliza realized, if he wanted to destroy his precious instrument. "But you love it."

"No, I don't. I don't love anything."

Her heart stopped. Did he not… he didn't love her anymore? She fainted and was out cold before she hit the floor.

* * *

She woke up to his voice singing in a now-dead language and his hand combing through her hair gently.

"R-Roderich?" she asked in a hoarse whisper.

"It's me," he said with a tender smile.

"But I thought you said – I thought you said you didn't love me." She came almost to tears as the words came out of her mouth.

"I fought a battle with my own mind. And I won." He leaned down and kissed her. "I really do love you."

But his fear had rubbed off on her. She no longer trusted him. "Would you die for me?"

"In a heartbeat."

"I don't believe you." Her voice trembled. This couldn't be the real Roderich. He'd just said he didn't love her. Why was he torturing her?

She picked up the gun that lay on the floor in the exact spot she'd dropped it. "Stop lying to me!" Eliza shouted and shot it at his head.

As he lay on the tile floor with blood pouring out the side of his head Eliza realized she'd killed him. She'd killed the real Roderich.

"No…" she moaned and held his head close. "No, no, no, no, no…"

As she embraced him Roderich realized that the monster in his head had moved on to her. It wasn't her fault. It wasn't her fault. "I love you…" he managed to whisper before his eyes closed and he was gone.

"RODERICH!" she shouted, her voice breaking. She screamed his name again and again for hours, laying on top of his lifeless body and practically clawing at his shirt.

It wasn't until she began to cough up blood that she realized the gun was still there, that it still had one bullet left. She looked down at her hand, covered in Roderich's blood and her tears, and then down at the gun.

With shaking hands she picked it up and raised it to her head. "I love you, Roderich Edelstein."

The gun fired.


End file.
